IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/iza/izadps/dp5543.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Managerial Incentives and Favoritism in Promotion Decisions: Theory and Field Evidence

Author

Listed:
  • Berger, Johannes

    (University of Cologne)

  • Herbertz, Claus

    (University of Cologne)

  • Sliwka, Dirk

    (University of Cologne)

Abstract

This paper investigates the effects of managerial incentives on favoritism in promotion decisions. First, we theoretically show that favoritism leads to a lower quality of promotion decisions and in turn lower efforts. But the effect can be mitigated by pay-for-performance incentives for managers who decide upon promotion. Second, we analyze matched employer-employee survey data with detailed firm level information on managerial incentive schemes and find that perceived promotion quality is indeed substantially higher when managers receive performance-related pay or participate in gain sharing plans.

Suggested Citation

  • Berger, Johannes & Herbertz, Claus & Sliwka, Dirk, 2011. "Managerial Incentives and Favoritism in Promotion Decisions: Theory and Field Evidence," IZA Discussion Papers 5543, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    • Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp5543
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://docs.iza.org/dp5543.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. K. Sommerfeld, 2013. "Higher and higher? Performance pay and wage inequality in Germany," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 45(30), pages 4236-4247, October.
    2. Hammermann, Andrea & Mohnen, Alwine & Nieken, Petra, 2012. "Whom to Choose as a Team Mate? A Lab Experiment about In-Group Favouritism," IZA Discussion Papers 6286, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    3. Sara Lowes & Etienne Le Rossignol, 2022. "Ancestral Livelihoods and Moral Universalism: Evidence from Transhumant Pastoralist Societies," Université Paris1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (Post-Print and Working Papers) hal-04083412, HAL.
    4. Dey, Oindrila & Banerjee, Swapnendu, 2015. "Endogenous favouritism with status incentives: A model of optimum inefficiency," MPRA Paper 62828, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. Jan Tichem, 2013. "Leniency Bias in Long-Term Workplace Relationships," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 13-196/VII, Tinbergen Institute.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    incentives; favoritism; nepotism; tournaments;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J33 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Compensation Packages; Payment Methods
    • M51 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Personnel Economics - - - Firm Employment Decisions; Promotions
    • M52 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Personnel Economics - - - Compensation and Compensation Methods and Their Effects
    • M54 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Personnel Economics - - - Labor Management
    • J71 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor Discrimination - - - Hiring and Firing

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp5543. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Holger Hinte (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/izaaade.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.